Results From New Hampshire Put Trump Up Against a Brick Wall

But news headlines the morning after remind me of a writer with a hangover trying to meet a deadline.

CHALLENGER NIKKI HALEY CAME WITHIN 12 POINTS OF BEATING TRUMP AFTER HE “TROUNCED” HER IN IOWA BY OVER 30 POINTS. (IMAGE BY PETE LINFORTH FROM PIXABAY)

BBBTwo, January 23rd 4th, 2024: I woke up the morning after the New Hampshire primary ready to vomit. According to reporters in The New York Times, the 2024 election is over and we might as well face it, anoint Trump the victor, and crown him King. His 11-point win over challenger Nikki Haley has Republican victory in November written all over it.

They must be smokin’ some strange stuff. If I were Donald Trump I would be shitting my pants right now. 

The New York Times reported that

“Trump’s Win Adds to Air of Inevitability …” 

And, despite Nikki Haley’s climb up from an almost 32-point loss in Iowa just a week before, they wrote:

Brushing aside Nikki Haley a little over a week after he steamrolled her and Ron DeSantis in Iowa, Mr. Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate who was not a White House incumbent to carry the nation’s first two contests. His winning margin of 11 percentage points in moderate New Hampshire demonstrated his ironclad control of the party’s hard-right base and set him on what could very well be a short march to the nomination.

I call bullshit!

It’s all in how you write the headline, I guess. And reporters needed to report a Trump victory to get readership.

Their unbridled smackdown of Ms. Haley’s 25-point gain over her Iowa result smacks of efforts of click-bait at best, blatant anti-woman prejudice at its worst.

The turnout in New Hampshire was record-breaking, in part because the state’s election rules allow “undeclared” voters … those registrants who have chosen not to join any political party … to vote in primaries. 

Over 300,00 voters turned out which eclipsed the previous highwater mark of 287,000 voters in 2016. Almost 50% of Tuesday’s turnout were undeclared voters.

A closer look reveals a slightly different story than a total Trump victory.

Here’s how ABC reported it:

Forty-seven percent of voters reported being registered as “undeclared” rather than Republican vs. a previous record of 45% in 2012. Haley won those undeclared voters by a 2-to-1 margin.

That seems to shore up some of the reporting in The New York Times where way down in the story they admitted:

…‘although his margin of victory decreased significantly from the primary in 2016, when he won New Hampshire by about 20 points over a crowded field. And he fell far short of his 30-point triumph in this month’s Iowa

and:

A significant slice of Ms. Haley’s support came from unaffiliated voters who wanted to send a message about stopping Mr. Trump — a reminder that he owns Republicans, but doesn’t own everybody else.

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about statistics that bear this conclusion out. The math shows that the Republican Party is the new “Third Party” in American Politics and cited these stats to prove it:

According to Ballotpedia, there are approximately 123.7 million voters in those states that allow potential voters to specify their party affiliation when they register to vote. Here’s how it breaks down:

38.87% or 48 Million voters identify as Democrats.

31.8% or 39.3 million voters register as Independents, or other.

29.42% or 36.4 million voters list themselves as Republicans.

So maybe the 300,000 New Hampshire voters and the 110,000 Iowa Caucus attendees … just a fraction of the millions of American voters … aren’t the end of the election as The New York Times has repeatedly said over the last ten days. Even they managed to mention that:

While Mr. Trump won the race, he failed to rack up the kind of numbers that would be expected of someone essentially running as an incumbent. He has been behaving as one as part of his strategy in battling the 91 criminal charges he is facing both in courts of law and courts of public opinion.

The fact is, Donald Trump has never won a majority of votes in a general election, and the results in New Hampshire … and history … prove it.

In the 2020 election, Democrat Biden got 81,283,501 votes to Mr. Trump’s 74,224,319. And, in the 2016 election, Trump didn’t win the popular vote either. Hillary Clinton far outpaced him with 65,853,514 votes to Trump’s 62,984,828.

It’s the antiquated Electoral College that elected Trump and we should never forget it.

All of this leads me to believe that the 2024 election is far from over. Trump’s back is against a brick wall and he knows it. Responding to Haley’s numbers, the Times reported:

He seemed visibly aware of that fact when he took the stage on Tuesday night, and signaled an uglier next phase. Using an expletive as he repeatedly attacked Ms. Haley, he said, “I don’t get too angry — I get even.”

Based on the contests so far, Donald Trump looks about as much like a winner in November as I look like the Metro-Goldwyn Mayor Lion.